Hermann Beyer

A tragedy brings a mother, daughter, and teenage boy together. Struggling with blame and forgiveness, the unlikely trio take a trip to Tenerife for a family holiday that never happened. Under the glow of the sun, past and present quietly start to overlap.

“If the ghosts can visit our time, we can visit theirs”. This freewheeling tour of German history of the 20th and 21st centuries follows a postmodern artist back to her East German village birthplace – where a discovered skeleton opens up mysteries both personal and political.

Fanny, a shy and lonely teenager, goes on a language exchange to Germany. In Leipzig, she meets her pen pal, Lena, a teenager eager to become politically active. Fanny is troubled. To win over Lena, she invents a life for herself, to the extent of becoming trapped in her lies.

Eva Jensen is a female carpenter form Hamburg who wants to make a new start on the Baltic Sea coast in eastern Germany. She tries to buy a workshop with a view of the sea offered for sale by Heide, who rents out beach chairs. Unfortunately, Heide’s ex-husband vetoes the sale. In trying to understand his reasons, Eva comes across a painful family secret from the days of the GDR. And in other respects too, the newcomer from the West faces prejudice in the village, although her skills are urgently needed. Fish-seller Christian is also interested in the workshop, which Eva just sees as fair competition. Then they discover a common passion, kite-surfing, and unexpectedly grow closer.

A snack bar owner smokes with his Muslim neighbor in the stairwell of their apartment building at night. Her husband is his good friend. They draw closer to one another as the nights go on and look out over the city to the dark satellites, the brutalist concrete buildings on the outskirts of the city - relics of the GDR past. A security guard watches over Objekt 95, a satellite town with a residential complex which many foreigners call home. While on patrol at night, he gets to know a young Ukrainian woman who fled her home country when the war broke out. He wants to protect her, while his friend, the “old security guard”, radios to him from an abandoned Russian barrack night after night. A woman from the train cleaning service drinks in a train station bar after her night shift. There, she meets a hairdresser. The two of them become friends and spend many nights together in the station. Every night, her desire grows even greater for this woman who is exactly as lonely as she is.

Clara is studying for a Ph.D in philosophy in Berlin. In this middle-class male academic environment, she feels pushed to one side. She returns to her childhood village in former East Germany for her mother's birthday, and becomes aware that a distance has grown between her and her family.

West Germany, 1983. Seventeen-year-old Ursula wants it all and is thus too much, although all she's looking for is love. Enter Siegfried Grimm, the charismatic new teacher who finally recognizes Ursula's true potential. She falls for him, head over heels. A pity that Grimm sexually liberates the entire village - except Ursula. While the Grimm acolytes fight for the favor of their idol, Ursula resorts to more radical measures. Whatever it takes, she'll get back at Grimm.

Boxer is the king of the prison. Nothing happens without him in "his" prison, and if he has to, he will even knock out a much younger inmate - at over 80 years of age, mind you. However, his advanced age is increasingly taking its toll, which has not gone unnoticed by the prison doctor. Boxer is to be transferred to a prison especially for senior citizens - the idea alone makes the sprightly prison veteran shudder. But then his buddy Henne tells him that he has been looking for Boxer's great love Kathrin, and what's more: he has learned that Kathrin has a daughter - and she looks remarkably like Boxer...

No plot available for this movie.

Three pensioners who live as subtenants on tiny pensions find themselves wanting to escape the sadness and mundanity of their everyday lives in old-age and poverty. They relish the thought that they could experience one last adrenalin-fuelled thrill during the twilight of their lives. With that motivation in mind, they set about commencing preparations for a big heist. Early Birds is a tragic comedy, a short film about poverty in old age, dignity and death.